In the paper, the notion of an AP-manifold is introduced. Such a manifold is an almost contact metric manifold that is locally equivalent to the direct product of a contact metric manifold and an Hermitian manifold. A normal AP-manifold with a closed fundamental form is a quasi-Sasakian manifold. A quasi-Sasakian AP-manifold is called in the paper a special quasi-Sasakian manifold (SQS-manifold). A SQS-manifold is locally equivalent to the product of a Sasakian manifold and a K¨ ahlerian manifold.
